More Sleight of Hand?

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/

So, while global media headlines are dominated by global economic instability, US and other nation's federal bail-out bills and the US election, this headline goes almost totally uncovered. As of today:

"Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks."

Now to me, this is much bigger news than a proposed $700 Billion bailout of a failing economic paradigm, especially since around twice that has been spent on bail outs or purchases which did not require legislation for some reason. When the military is tasked to "coordinate defense support of civil authorities", a large step has been taken towards becoming a blatantly fascist state. This statement may land me in hot water but it seems to me that a government which uses terror, military or financial or otherwise, to influence the will of the public, is a terrorist organization itself. Fear, guilt and greed (and others yet) have been used over and over throughout history, to control the masses...usually as empirical societies broke down. For me, to see this accelerating, so blatantly, in North America, is a fairly obvious sign that our corporate, maximum profit and consumer based New World society...is crumbling around us.

Another important aspect of this story, is that "The at-home mission does not take the place of scheduled combat-zone deployments and will take place during the so-called dwell time a unit gets to reset and regenerate after a deployment." Now, given what we know about undiagnosed and untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder how often are peaceful protesters going to be physically seen as insurgents by some poor shell shocked Middle East veteran? I dunno, maybe I just worry too much.

To me, public outcry over this move should be as intense as that over the financial bailouts, if not more so. To my understanding, this is National Guard duty, at best. Of course, aren't most of the National Guard details on duty in Iraq and/or Afghanistan?

So what does this mean for Canadians, now? This is some information on how Northcom affects Canada. To my understanding, this means we now have a good idea which US troops we will first see deployed actively on Canadian soil (probably securing some freshwater source) under the guise of North American security. Of course Canada needs to be defended from hostile interests, but...('nuff said I hope).

Once upon a time, I would have watched all of these proceedings from a rather detached point of view, but now that Canadian activity is so heavily linked to US activity...often even controlled by it, Canadians and many other nations can no longer remain detached. Once again tho, I guess we just have to see how things go. For the record, I do hope I am dreadfully wrong to be concerned...but I do not think I am.

Peace to all.